Aug 22, 2014

Most BlackBerry fans are anxious to get their hands on the Passport, which is expected to arrive sometime in September. However, there’s a small portion of fans who prefer huge, all-touch devices and they will not see the Passport as a good replacement for their Z10 or Z30 phone.

Their hopes have been fueled by John Chen’s previous statements that the company is really looking into getting a phablet out, if their finances permit it, of course. Unfortunately, BlackBerry will not be releasing any all-touch high-end smartphones this year, according to the company’s roadmap for the rest of 2014. The folks over at N4BB report that they got their hands on a Blackberry 2014 Global Roadmap, but only the devices that we already know of are confirmed. It appears that BlackBerry will focus on only four aspects for the remaining of the year: Affordable, Classic, Innovative and Prestige. This means that only four BlackBerry 10 smartphones will make it on the market this year. The affordability aspect will be highlighted by the so-called BlackBerry Z3 LTE Manitoba, which was leaked about a month ago along with the BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9983.

The main target for the BlackBerry Z3 LTE will be those who wish to upgrade from feature phones and BBOS, as well as for “enterprise fleet renewal.” The second aspect on which the company confirmed that it would focus its marketing efforts is the Classic. Well, this will be covered by the Blackberry Classic, also known as the Blackberry Q20. The device is seen as an “upgrade for BlackBerry QWERTY base and enterprise fleet renewal.” The BlackBerry Passport is the Innovative handset that will be released this year and is meant to “bring X-Pros back to BlackBerry.” The smartphone is also aimed at business executives. Last but not least, in the Prestige class, BlackBerry plans to release the Porsche Design P’9983, which will be the first BlackBerry 10 QWERTY smartphone created by the latter.

These are all the devices mentioned in BlackBerry’s roadmap, which means the Canadian company has no intention of bringing a high-end phablet on the market by the end of the year. The situation might change next year, but that will probably depend on how good the sales for the smartphones launched this year will be. For the time being, BlackBerry doesn’t think that a powerful all-touch BlackBerry smartphone would make sense, so those waiting for one will have to wait until next year, at least.